Real-Time Communication refers to the downloading of streaming video or audio media to a browser from a website, or an interactive voice, video, or multimedia communication that happens among two or more parties. Such communication happens between two computers in an internet protocol (IP) network, and may be conducted over a protocol such as Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) using Real-time Transfer Protocol (RTP), or over HyperText Markup Language (HTML) using the Web Real-Time Communication (WebRTC) specifications. With the advent of mobile phones, such services are also expected to occur on the mobile networks carrying IP traffic.
In a wired IP network, techniques such as peer-to-peer communication for RTP or WebRTC allow an efficient communication of bandwidth-intensive data between two peers, bypassing the need to go to a server (which mainly handles signaling aspects). However, in a mobile network, peer-to-peer communication over IP networks is inefficient because the design of the cellular network causes even peer-to-peer traffic to go over congested links twice. Thus, schemes like WebRTC or peer-to-peer RTP do not provide any quality gains for mobile users.
Accordingly, techniques for improved IP-based real-time communication over a mobile network would be desirable.